


A delightful small-town mystery

by SillyBlue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, POV Outsider, Small Towns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 04:42:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18958102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SillyBlue/pseuds/SillyBlue
Summary: A small town's impression on the Winchester family.





	A delightful small-town mystery

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in 2013. Once upon a time it was meant to be a Halloween one-shot but somehow it never made it into one.

The Winchester household had its reputation. There was something distinctly odd about the new neighbors and they’ve fueled a multitude of gossip-ridden discussions around their small town.

Maybe it was that the household consisted of three males in their thirties all sharing the same last name. It was cause enough for many a raised eyebrow. Certainly not a common family constellation. Certainly a reason to spark lots of curiosity and not so subtle information gathering whenever the chance presented itself.

Almost a year of having them around, the extent of information on those Winchester boys shared between the interested was the following:

Dean Winchester was a perfectly nice man, anyone agreed on that. He joined BBQs, he made small-talk when you met him in the shops, did spectacular work with all kinds of machines and visited college late at night. He was a family man through and through though he didn’t quite like to take the compliment. People had various guesses at the backstory of Werner's Vintage Automobiles most handsome mechanic. He had probably been in the army, but other than agreeing that he had seen enough bloodshed to last him multiple lifetimes, he never affirmed or denied any guesses.

Then there was Sam you’d encounter in the library and in old Oliver’s bookshop. He was intelligent and charming, in a different way than Dean was. Certainly, college educated and he knew his way around the law, but apparently had long lots his passion for it. Nowadays, he had confessed, he was looking for all the smaller ways to save people. He could be trusted to do things, always was quick to help out anyone in need, and always had an open ear for problems.

And then there was the _Missus_ Dean talked fondly of whenever he felt relaxed enough. Actually, the so-called Missus of the Winchester household was called Cas, which was a shortening of a name nobody knew exactly what it was supposed to be. Dotty Schuster claimed it to be Castiel, but Dotty kept her head between the pages of dusty books (and worse! Cheap thriller paperbacks) and her beloved bed of flowers, so nobody paid her any attention. It was a bit of a surprise to many when Cas turned out to be a bit of a scruffy man who never parted with his trusty, rumpled overcoat.

Cas was an excellent person even though he stuck out like a sore thumb. He was quiet, blunt and either had far too much patience with people or absolutely none at all. For some reason or another he had ended up on the parent council for the local school more by accident than having a kid in school. He participated in the book club and tea meetings and never batted an eyelash when he was asked to join activities where he always wound up being the only man. Of course, everybody liked him.

Miss Whiteberry had an opinion or two on how it wasn’t right that everybody, including his husband, kept on referring to him as _Mrs._ Winchester, because it superimposed a stereotypical gender role onto a probably homosexual man, but Miss Whiteberry was fond of having opinions about anything. She had taken two semesters of gender studies back in college before she realized that her vocation lay elsewhere. Now she was a dedicated police officer and at least now people actually had to listen to her. (Obviously, it did the community a lot of good to have someone in charge who cared about looking at a situation twice before making up her mind about it. But this was a small town, so the interesting gossip about Miss Whiteberry was still that she had opinions about everything.)  

Emma, the only girl and minor in that interesting family constellation, assured everyone that she was fine, really and that the family was great, thank you, whenever she was asked. Emma was a good girl, bright, apparently got only good grades if Henrietta Bradford was to be trusted (at least her son said so). At the weekends she worked in the small tea room next to Old Oliver’s book shop, the one all the teenagers seemed to like so much. It wasn't only a hot spot for the youth because Emma was a people magnet, at least that’s what Henrietta’s son said. But Henriette was sure that her son hung out there because he was sweet on Emma. And who wouldn't be?

Nobody quite knew how things worked in this family and how Emma had gotten into it. Fact was that she called Dean her Dad and Sam her uncle. Usually Cas was just Cas, though whenever Dean was around and talking about his missus again, then she would roll her eyes and play along by calling him Mom. Miss Whiteberry of course had concerns about that too, but Emma had assured her that that was just a little joke, there was nothing odd or demeaning about it. Other than the few occasions where the men of the family got called mom with various degrees of exasperation and fondness, nobody ever talked about Emma's actual mother. Gentle inquires had been met with easy and swift changes of topic.

People generally assumed Emma was really Dean’s daughter, despite how young Dean must have been when Emma was born, because they actually resembled each other quite a bit. But nobody ever asked, especially not Cas for fear of hurting his feelings. Though, Miss Whiteberry had once been foolish enough to try. All she, and the circle of people eager to know the answer to that mystery as well, found out was that apparently Emma's mother was a monster that preyed on men and that Dean had been lucky to avoid being killed. He had said it with such seriousness that nobody dared to ask him about it again.

The thing about the Winchesters was that they were impossible to actually fit into graspable categories, but they were too irresistible and mysterious and engaged in community life to actually warrant negativity. And everybody loved a little pleasant mystery.


End file.
